Being exposed to the real world after high school can bring about certain challenges to disabled aspirants. Transitional planning can assist by crafting a definitive framework. It is a predetermined set of regulations that are formed to make a smooth jump from high school to college or the real world.
While the implementation of transitional planning depends upon the collaborative efforts of parents, staff, and service providers, it can be overwhelming to ensure that all the supportive measures are properly implemented.
Having a handy checklist can make parents, teachers, and also students warrant the process is smoothly employed. In this post, we bring to you a set of questions as a checklist; with these insights, you can also discern multiple other tips to smoothen out the procedure further.
What is Transition Planning?
A list of supporting activities that makes it easy for the special student to shift from school to college or an independent learning style is encompassed in Transition Planning. Based on the subjective needs and abilities of the students, the level of assistance changes.
Generally, it is applicable for children around 16 years of age where these regulations can be added to their IEP goals.
Why is having a Transition Planning checklist important?
A checklist is the set of points that makes sure all the attributes of transition are ensured. One should have a checklist for transition planning because:
- It Mitigates the chances to forget crucial attributes. With multiple things to take care of, some may forget to warrant a few attributes. Making a checklist for school-related, personal, and legal aspects can make the transition implementation successful.
- Teachers with this checklist can retain the quality of services by stipulating service providers.
- Students can make use of these checklists to see what all attributes are needed to pass out of high school successfully. Also, by this list, they can assure that all the required attributes are acquired.
- With multiple requirements clearly listed out, one can make a fitting strategy to cover these areas effortlessly.
Transition Planning checklist
The transition planning is all about making the candidate ready for life after high school. But digging deep into it, there are many underlying factors that one must comprehend. A detailed checklist can help to ensure all the background factors of this process are ensured.
Check out the following checklist questions and regularly evaluate on the basis of these if all of the areas are appropriately addressed:
Role of School in transition
- Are the provisions of the transition process discussed with the parents and child?
- Is the child able to decide what they want to do after school?
- Is the learning style of the student focused while determining the transition process?
- Is the school working towards providing financial support for the child?
- Are the school staff and principal actively involved in the translation process?
- Is the student provided with appropriate assistive tools as needed?
Transition facilitator and other service providers
- Are the transition goals added to the IEP goals of the student?
- Are the school and service providers offering activity-based learning for the child?
- Are the special transitional services of the child properly provided?
- Is the transition facilitator evaluating and recording the student’s performance?
- Are the communication and other attributes of the students properly focused on?
- Are the external service providers helping the child?
Colleges and Later career
- Is the aspirant properly exposed to all the courses, colleges, and options available after high school?
- Is the student taken to on-site camps to expose them to opportunities?
- Are the basic official needs like a driving license and bank account listed in the goal list?
- Is the aspirant exposed to insurance and registration to vote?
- Is the candidate learning new attributes to enhance job skills?
Personality
- Are the interests of the child changing with time?
- Are they able to identify and use multiple public transportation services?
- Is the candidate able to explain their disability if needed?
- Is the child learning to be a self-advocate?
- Is the candidate able to take personal care and maintain personal hygiene?
- Is the student able to build relationships in new places?
Tips for better transition planning
A smooth application of the process can make the transition easy and practical. Apart from the checklist above, here are some working tips that make the process successful for your child:
- Ensure the student-centered decisions. There can be multiple factors that may impact the transition process, like the demography, background of the family, and the present trend. Despite all these factors, parents should prioritize the student above all to making decisions. This means that the interests, abilities, and security of the child are to be valued the most.
- Traverse through the pros and cons. As a part of the transition process, parents may look into various colleges to pursue further education after high school or a job. In both these cases, it is important to conduct detailed research and look into the ups and downs of all the choices available.
- Start it early. While the implementation of the transition process applies at the age of 16, the parents and staff collaboratively evaluate the candidate to infer and employ the transition goals as early as possible. Even the official IDEA regulations support the early implementation of the plan.
While we conclude…
It is important to avail transition planning for special children. What’s equally important is to make sure these are properly implemented. Evidently, referring to a checklist can bring about a warranty of crucial points. The checklist we suggested is effective in evaluating multiple areas like school, personality, and service providers. With these insights, you can ease out the process and get ready for the transfer with confidence. Also, make sure you traverse through easy tips to lubricate the system.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,